Blockchain Revolution

6.
Rights Preserved
Principle: Ownership rights are transparent and enforceable. Individual freedoms are
recognized and respected. We hold this truth to be self-evident—that all of us are born
with certain inalienable rights that should and can be protected.
Problem to Be Solved: The first era of the digital economy was about finding
ways to exercise these rights more efficiently. The Internet became a medium for new
forms of art, news, and entertainment, for establishing copyright of poems, songs,
stories, photographs, and audio and video recordings. We could apply the Uniform
Commercial Code further to do online what the code had already expedited in
physical space, which was to eliminate the need to negotiate and create contracts for
every single item, like a tube of toothpaste, no matter how small its price. Even so, we
had to trust middlemen to manage transactions, and they had the power to deny the
transaction, delay it, and hold the money in their own account (bankers call this
“float”), or clear it only to reverse it later. They expected a percentage of people to
cheat and accepted a certain level of fraud as unavoidable.
In this great burst of efficiency, legitimate rights got trampled, the rights not only
to privacy and security but also free speech, reputation, and equal participation.
People could anonymously censor us, defame us, and block us at little cost or risk to
themselves. Filmmakers who depended on revenues from syndication, video on
demand, enhanced DVD sales, and cable rights to films released decades earlier found

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their revenue stream drying up to a trickle as their fans uploaded digital files for
others to download for free.